


We are

by Endless_Torment



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Brother/Brother Incest, Drama, Explicit Language, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Missing Scene, Oral Sex, POV First Person, Translation in English, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:28:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endless_Torment/pseuds/Endless_Torment
Summary: You can try to hide a lot behind negative emotions. But sometimes it becomes harmful.
Relationships: Carver Hawke/Male Hawke
Kudos: 11





	We are

**Author's Note:**

> A translation of [Мы есть](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4659651) by [Val. Ekkert](https://ficbook.net/authors/1197181).

Poverty had driven to despair. And despair itself...

Well as they say, despair will bring you to the Deep Roads.

We're sure to get there, and soon—Garrett, of course, has a death grip on the younger Tethras's offer. (It gave me pleasure to think of Varric as "the youngest of the Tethras". At least in my head I was trying to repay him for the mocking "Junior" he had glued to me. However, if he found out, he would start laughing. It wouldn't have bothered him in the least. Not a bit).

My brother rowed with both hands, and helped himself with his feet—almost every time someone wanted us to do something, he demanded money and always looked for a better option. In some places I approved, but of course, more often than not, I found it infuriating. I hated the way he scoffed, I hated his stupid jokes, I hated the ease with which he traded his magic and my sword, and the efficiency with which Garrett robbed the dead.

"If this goes on," I thought on particularly hopeless evenings, "we won't make it to the Roads. We'll be thrown away, and no amount of help from Aveline will stop that. She may even contribute to it happening. Hmm, but prison food... Regularly..."

Sarcasm didn't help.

But time passed, and for some reason we were not thrown anywhere.

No, really. I didn't understand what was going on: Meeran was alright: he was providing us with some kind of cover, so it's all clear back then, but now, how? How did we get out of the water dry, even though the number of corpses left behind only grew, and many of them could easily be concluded: killed by magic. And the others: heads were taken off with a two-handed sword, or cut in two, or... They didn't touch us. And it amazed me: after a year in the Red Iron, every dog knew us for sure, and almost anyone who saw us would surrender. But come on.

Well, I didn't want to believe that we were taxing only on Garrett's abnormal luck. Or on his charms.

And then there were scandals with Gamlen; we found our grandparent's stupid will, and it turned out to be something so offensive, that I almost smashed the wall in with my fist in a fit of anger, and then I almost started crying at Garrett. Like a child. Well, I hid the desire to roar for aggression, as always. As if that would fool him.

He came to talk to me, and I was carrying on some kind of charade about how if I had a chance to go back, I would fix what went wrong, and not dig up ancient names or forgotten inheritances. I was bleating something unintelligible about other people's mistakes—this is to put it very mildly—but what I really wanted to do was howl and hang around the older man's neck, and have him pat me on the head and say something like, "don't worry, Carvey, everything will be fine."

A strange childhood desire. In fact, he hasn’t said that to me since I was nine—I was running and I fell and hurt my forehead, and it was painful and scary, even though I knew that nothing bad was going to happen, but my mother was groaning and swearing, Bethany felt sorry for me and even seemed to cry, and my father was frowning—I couldn't be treated with magic, of course, and he was weak in healing; and Garrett, the only one of them, stroked my hair and comforted me. After that, they washed my forehead, bandaged it, and scolded me for my carelessness—and even after that, he continued to sit with me and stroke my unfortunate head.

Now, ten years later, I was snapping like a whiny teenager, even though I was nineteen, and I was actively looking for a reason to find fault with Garrett. 

Everyone thought I was envious and worthless, not appreciating what he had.

And that was fine with me, because if someone had seen what I was trying so hard to hide behind all this, I probably would have died on the spot.

After all, I wasn't a fool, so I had little trouble figuring out what I really wanted from Garrett. It was much more difficult after that not to jump off Sundermount, or from the dock, straight into the Waking Sea. Or even throwing yourself on the sword, for the sake of great pathos.

And it wasn't because I wanted to cry on his chest.

There were many desires there—and quite different ones. Wrong.

Ugh.

And I saw all our communication from my side in a murderously crooked mirror. This is not something to hang on the wall—it would be a shame to carry it in your pocket.

I didn't want Garrett to touch me—I didn't want him to tap me on the shoulder or slap me between the shoulder blades. Because I could react to any brotherly touch in a very UN-brotherly way.

I could swear at him until I was hoarse, yell at him that he understood nothing. Because I was terrified that he could easily understand everything. And because I didn't want to yell until I was hoarse.

I hissed desperately that he was the problem, that I was always in his shadow, and that if he pushed me behind him again, both literally and figuratively, he would regret it bitterly. Because I couldn't say that I would help him cope with all the problems (which, in all conscience, he already understood), and I couldn't admit how unbearably comfortable and right it was being behind his back. 

And maybe a little more, and it would have gotten to where I would have had the sense to yell in his face I hated him.

Of course, because I loved him.

Of course.

* * *

But it turned out differently.

In fact, he came to chat with me after we found the will. I was sad and depressed—I didn't want all this. I had no place in the life that my mother was reviving from the ashes. That's what I told Garrett, among other things.

And word for word, "you could", "you couldn't", "you can't fix anything"...

"Good talk," Garrett said at last. And he took a step toward the door to our little room.

And it wasn't cats that scratched at my soul, but a pair of dragons. 

"I'm like mother," I blurted out when I reached him. I was scared, desperately scared, and my stomach almost shook when he decided whether to turn around. "She snapped at us when she was upset," I said, brilliantly.

I took a deep breath and blurted out the only acceptable thing that was going through my poor head:

Garrett raised his eyebrows, and I bit the inside of my cheek hard to hold my expression. "But I need to find my place."

Garrett paused heavily. Then he took a step closer to me and without hesitation put his hand firmly on my shoulder. A hot, fiery, heavy paw.

I almost howled. For his touch made me want to lean against him, to press my face against his neck (even though I was taller, would it have hurt?), to close my hands on his back and either kiss the flaming skin, or... I don't know. But I couldn't stand there any longer. I couldn't.

My brother looked at me, monstrously serious, almost without blinking, with his tenacious blue eyes—I have almost the same, only the expression is not the same, of course—and, such a bastard, was close. Unbearably close: I felt the heat of his body almost like my own. Which should be expected from an elemental fire mage, like him.

But I guess I was a bit of an idiot after all. A smart man would have thrown off his hand long ago and walked away, so as not to tempt himself—and not be a dead giveaway.

"Let's go to the room," Garrett called softly. "I've got a bottle of what they're trying to pass off as Orlesian tincture, but it's better than nothing. And there's going to be a conversation about this."

And then I would have wriggled out, yelled, protested, shouted that I didn't need alcohol, or "conversations", or his fucking custody...

But of course I went.

Went like a fool.

Garrett was Garrett.

And my habit was to obey him... this very habit.

I really listened to him. Maybe, of course, it seemed to everyone that this was not so, but what did they understand?

...He pulled the swill out from under the bed—of course, the bottle couldn't be clean and without cobwebs—uncorked it, took a sip, and handed it to me.

And... damn. Of course, it would be strange if we didn't drink from the same dish: in the roads and inroads only so it turned out, and the last bottle of healing potion, divided into two—it was familiar and somehow demonically intimate, even to the strangely sweet whining inside. But now, putting the neck of the bottle that Garrett's lips had just touched into my mouth—in the bedroom, when neither my mother nor Gamlen was home, behind the closed door—that seemed much more intimate to me.

But, realizing that my cheeks were going to get red, I quickly took a sip of the swill—if I blush, I would put it down to alcohol.

Orlesian tincture, of course, turned out to be a terrible mess, although it honestly tasted like a peach. But for serious conversations that make you sick—just right. The nausea will be much stronger later, but not from conversation.

Probably, for this reason, during heavy chatter, many people drink.

"Your place, then..." Garrett took the wine from me, took another sip, and put it back in my hand. The glass where he touched it warmed, and almost against my will, I tightened my grip on the bottle. "Carv, you know this is your business, right? And that if I offer to help you do that, you'll tell me to fuck off."

What was he supposed to say now?

When he was so calm, so reasonable, and didn't scoff—without all the "Hello, Lord Carver," ugh!—and sitting so close to me, burning me with just his presence?"...

I swallowed hard.

"I won't," and, as usual, I accepted his rules. "But I won't accept any help. You're right, it's just mine. And only depends on me."

In the pause that followed, I clearly heard other words: "I won't accept your help in something that is very important to me, and this is normal, the situation is like this, but you can accept my help."

Filthy temper, filthy cowardice—I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud.

"I keep forgetting you're nineteen," my brother sighed, dropping his hands between his knees. "And this is the age when you don't understand where you're serious, and where you understand the smart and correct thing, and where you behave like a teenager. Don't be offended."

And it was so unlike him, I was completely at a loss. I didn't know what to do with it. I just didn't know.

It seemed to be so hard for him that in a few seconds and a couple of sentences, he aged ten years. And I really, really didn't like it.

The shame was unbearable. I knew, of course, just how bad it was for him. Taking on the burden of being the head of the family and not saving one of us almost immediately—yeah, is fucking easy. And I am still silent about the pain of loss itself. I'm still afraid to think about this loss. When you're torn in half, it's kind of hard to remember.

You can't forget, either, yeah.

And I, such a bastard, also reminded him.

And, upon my word, it was terrible to think how I must have upset him with my screams and other bickering. This is even if you don't count now.

I wanted to hide it from him... Foolish. First, this is Garrett. He'll figure it out anyway. Sooner or later, one way or another. And second...

Second, if you understand that one method of concealment turned out to be shitty, then come up with another.

Or don't hide it.

I didn't want to think of another way.

I took as much wine as I could hold in my mouth. I swallowed hard, then squatted on the floor and handed the bottle to Garrett, coming face to face with him:

"Drink."

A panicked "why?!" thumped once in my head and then subsided.

My brother reached out very slowly and swallowed just as slowly, quite a lot, too, as far as I could see.

Then he set the bottle on the floor. And he looked at me once... strangely. Maybe he didn't know what to expect from me now...

Or, on the contrary, he knew.

It was uncomfortable squatting, so I changed my position and knelt in front of my brother. Hmm, the situation... If it weren't for the tension and fear, I would have giggled drunkenly.

"Carvey—" and he called me by a half-forgotten, even half-erased, childish pet name, and I could almost hear the crash of an imaginary wall falling between us, "what the fuck are you doing?"

So I decided it was best not to answer out loud.

I wrapped my hands around the back of his neck, closed my eyes like a child, and pressed my lips against his, scraping my chin against his stubble—as if it mattered, ugh.

Probably the worst thing Garrett could really do in this situation was pull away, pat me on the shoulder or on the head, look hard and walk away, and then pretend that nothing happened, like I did nothing, said nothing, and I didn't feel wrong. And he would go on with his jokes, and pull me into many adventures, and do a lot of shit and a lot of useful things—and I'd hang around with him and hold back the howl every second. Seriously.

But he answered.

And he answered in a way that clarified that he was not doing me any favors, not trying to go along with me, so I would fall behind, and not some other nonsense. I just wanted the same thing.

The realization made my eyes flash, and I let go of his neck and would have fallen, but it turned out that Garrett was holding me by the shoulders. He held it tight. And hot, of course, where without it.

I broke the kiss with a sob. With the wounded cry of an animal caught right in the clutches of a predator, and even of its own free will. And he opened his eyes.

The association with the animal and the predator has intensified many times over—and only from the way Garrett looked and smiled. My head was already spinning, and I grabbed my brother's shoulders—no, he would have held on, but I still stupidly hoped to keep at least some remnants of my dignity.

"And what-" for some reason I said something else. "Now you're going to call me a pervert and throw me out?"

As soon as said that, I bit my tongue, but it was too late.

He just snorted:

"You're a fool."

He let go of one shoulder, grabbed me by the hair, and pulled me back into the kiss.

Maker, fuck, and I remember the first time I kissed some girl in Lothering when I was a boy. I thought it was great.

What did I ever know about kissing, you idiot!

Garrett touched his tongue exactly where it needed to be. Biting when I was just catching the fleeting thought that it was missing something. He held my hair in such a way that it made me hard, it seemed, just from that. 

Pulling away again, Garrett pressed his forehead against my shoulder and stroked my neck with a deceptive softness, which was sensitive, of course, because of the tightness of my skin...

I gave a low moan, and he laughed a little hoarsely:

"And before, you almost fought with a girl you liked. I should have guessed, Carvey."

"So I'm good at disguising myself," I even snorted indignantly. The indignation, however, was mostly feigned. I was only annoyed that... I found what to remember. "You're just going to talk, aren't you?"

And slightly butted his shoulder.

Garrett chuckled and ruffled my hair, which was so fucking awesome that I almost fell off my knees again.

"What are you going to do to keep me from talking?"

If you only knew how many options I have...

"Occupy your mouth-" did I really say that? "Then you won't be talking and I can't answer you either."

"If you laugh now," an evil thought suddenly fluttered in my head, "I just don't know what I'm going to do to you, you bastard."

But of course Garrett didn't laugh. As always, damn empathetic to a fault. He just pressed down on my shoulder, simultaneously guiding my head and burying it in his groin, and I barely had time to put my hands on his hips as I felt his boner rub against my cheek.

Unable to resist the urge, I rubbed against his cock, heard a hoarse exhalation, and then lowered his pants.

Fuck everything—take it off, put it on... Not before.

I have seen my brother naked many times, but there can be no comparison at all. Of course, I still considered it, as for the first time. Ugh, stupid.

From the desire to touch, from the sight, from the smell, I was completely stupefied.

And immediately I took his cock deep into my throat.

Garrett, with a short, hoarse moan, grabbed my hair again, but this time not too hard. He pulled back a little, exhaled from above:

"Well, you're quiet. Don't rush. What am I, running away?"

I lifted my head in response to his hand. There was an almost hopeless, plaintive "why not?" on the tip of my tongue, but what did I need it for if I believed it?

And he directed me. He pushed lightly on the lips and ordered more:

"Just keep your mouth open, okay?"

I couldn't answer, of course. And "just" kept my mouth open, too. I wanted to do it all myself, but Garrett held me...

But I could lick the head. Okay, not to lick it, but to touch it with my tongue. And as long as I could, I touched him—it made Garrett moan so long and hoarsely—I didn't know he was like that. Here he seems in command, but somehow a little... pliable, or something...

At some point, my excitement became unbearable, and I put my hand down my pants with no extra sentiment. I wanted Garrett's hands, of course, but if I'd waited, I'd have let them go.

But he still finished faster than me. He came in my mouth before I could pull away—and I was holding one of his thighs—and fell back on the bed, panting.

I swallowed his cum, and it was the realization that it was his that pushed me over the edge.

I think I even screamed. Maybe not. What's the difference.

After a while, I realized that I was still on my knees by the bed, my face buried in what used to be a mattress, and Garrett was pulling me by the shoulder, probably to lay me down next to him.

"You'll have to wait for me to do it next time," he said in an insufferably matter-of-fact tone. As a matter of course. He pulled me to him as I fell down beside him, too shaken to say anything.

_'Next time...'_

I buried my face in his shoulder, not even trying to suppress an idiotic smile.

Outside, there was all the shit of Kirkwall, the stench, the filth, the squalor, and the dim prospects.

And here—here we were.

And I'll be damned if it doesn't work out now.

At least somehow.


End file.
